Aztec Blood

  "No!" I slapped her hands away from it. I could feel the stirring in my pene, the power building up, ready to gush. "It belonged to my mother," I moaned, thrusting.

  "Perhaps God wants me to have it. My own son had one like it."

  "Ask him for his."

  "I haven't seen him in years. He lives in Veracruz," she panted.

  "I lived in Veracruz. What's his name?"

  "Cristóbal."

  "My name is Cristo—"

  She stopped cold and stared down at me. I stopped thrusting and stared up at her. Two dark eyes in the mask stared down at me. The volcano between my legs was shaking my whole body, ready to erupt and pour lava into her.

  "Cristóbal!" she screamed.

  She leapt off the bed and ran from the room. I lay numb, my volcano slowly shrinking. Maria. My mother's Christian name was Maria.

  I struggled into my clothes and staggered out of the room to find Mateo. My mind and body were in the grip of a growing sense of horror.

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  I left the House of the Seven Angels feeling cold and depressed. Mateo was waiting for me in the courtyard. He sat on the edge of the fountain, flipping his dagger. His face told the story of his luck.

  "I lost the horse. When the madam finds out he's lame, she'll send her underlings to rip off my privates, stick them in my mouth, and sew my lips shut." He noticed my dejected state. What had occurred was too horrible to reveal, too heinous to share even with a good friend, too infamous to acknowledge even to myself.

  He slapped me on the back. "Don't feel so bad. Tell me the truth. You could not get your garrancha up, eh? Don't worry, compadre. Tonight you could not get your sword up, but tomorrow, I swear, when a woman passes within ten feet of you, your sword will reach out of your pants and slip into her."

  Morning came and I stayed in my hard bed in my stinking room, refusing to leave, hoping that miasma from the stables would kill me. I had found my mother and then—no! It was too awful to think about. She had not seen me since I was a young boy. Today, I was just a bearded young stranger to her, but a good son would have recognized his own mother. Like Oedipus, I was damned and doomed, tricked by the gods, and deserved only to stick needles into my eyes and spend my days as a blind beggar, tormented by my sins.

  Midday I sent a servant to the House of Seven Angeles to ascertain the price of Miaha's freedom. The servant returned with news that the woman had fled during the night, leaving the madam unpaid for her bond debt.

  There would be no use searching for her on the streets of the city; she would not be foolish enough to run from her legal bond master and stay around the city. Besides the horror of the act we had committed, my appearance in her life would have ignited anew the troubles that had driven us from the hacienda when I was a boy. As an india, she could disappear forever into the land.

  Among his many babblings, Fray Antonio claimed I had no mother. From that I took it to mean that Maria was not my mother. But last night she had claimed me as her son. ¡Ay de mí! I felt so miserable.

  Late in the next afternoon Mateo took me to go to the Alameda. "The don's horses are well enough for pulling a carriage or working cattle, but we can't ride such animals on the Alameda. We would be laughed off of the green."

  "Then what will we do?"

  "We walk, as if our servants were tending our horses while we stretched our legs."

  "Perhaps the señoritas will not notice our poverty."

  "What! A Spanish woman not knowing the amount of gold in a man's pouch? Would God not notice the man who murdered the pope? I said that we would walk, not that we would fool anyone."

  We strolled along the cool greenery, watching the champion horses and champion women. How envious I was of everything! To be born and raised basking in the reflection of silver and gold—rather than rags and straw. I had chosen the best clothes that the don had handed down to me and a dress sword he had given me. What I had thought on the hacienda was a fine blade with a fancy basket hilt was little more than a kitchen knife on the Alameda. My confidence began to fade as I suspected that people saw the lépero under my clothes.

  No matter how I thought of myself as the peacock, there was always something to give away my lack of breeding. Even my hands betrayed me. The hands of the proud men on the Alameda were as soft and delicate as a woman's. They probably had never even lifted on a pair of breeches. My hands were hard and callused from working cattle. I kept them closed, hoping no one would notice that I had used my hands for honest labor.

  Women saw my ordinary clothes and lack of a horse, and their eyes slid past me as if I was invisible. But Mateo grabbed their attention no matter how worn the heels of his boots or how frayed the cuffs of his doublet. He had an arrogance about him, not the haughtiness of a dandy, but an aura of danger and excitement that told a woman he was a scoundrel who would steal her heart and jewels but leave her smiling.

  I noticed that some of the women and men wore masks, full-face ones and the type that only covered the upper half of the face.

  "Fashion," Mateo said, "it is all the rage. New Spain is always years behind Europe. Masks were the fashion ten years ago when I fought in Italy. Many women even wear them smeared with oil to bed, believing it eases the wrinkles on their faces."

  As we walked Mateo told me that he had already been working on the investigation for Don Julio.

  "I contacted the man that the don says acts for the Recontonería. He is a strange little man, not at all the cutthroat or with the appearance of blackguard, but more the type who counts sheep and writes down the pounds of wool for a merchant. The don says he is merely a go-between for several notables in the city to whom the pesos taken from illegal pulquerias, whorehouses, and control of the marketplace ultimately passes."

  Mateo was describing his negotiations with the man for a pulqueria when I saw a familiar figure. Ramon de Alva rode high in the saddle, a big man on a big horse. I cringed first at the sight of him and then straightened my spine. I was not a young picaro on the streets of Veracruz, but a Spanish gentleman with a sword strapped to my side.

  Nothing got past Mateo, and he followed my gaze.

  "De Alva, the right hand man of Don Diego de Velez, one of the richest men in New Spain. Alva's said to be rich as Croesus himself, also the best swordsman in the colony—except for myself, of course. Why do you stare at this man as if you wished to put your dagger in his gullet?"

  At that moment Alva stopped beside a carriage. The woman in the carriage was wearing a half mask, but I recognized the carriage. Isabella, laughing gaily at something Alva said, carrying on her flirtation and the don's disgrace in plain sight for all the notables of the city to see.

  Someone snickered off to my left. A group of young hidalgos were watching the exchange between Alva and Isabella. The one who snickered wore a gold doublet and breeches with red and green slashes that made him look like a bright jungle bird.

  "Look at Alva with the converso's wife," the canary said. "We should all let her do our penes in the viper way. What else is a converso's wife good for?"

  I flew at the yellow bird and punched him in the face. He staggered backward.

  "You are a woman," I told him, uttering the worse insult one could give an hombre, "and I'm going to use you as one."

  He snarled and went for his sword. I grabbed for mine—and my hand fumbled with the basket on the hilt! My sword was only half drawn when the yellow bird lunged with his for my throat.

  A sword flashed between us and, the bird's sword was countered. Mateo followed with lightning thrusts that cut the hidalgo's arm. The man's sword fell to the ground, and his friends drew their swords. Mateo was quickly on them, and soon all three were in full retreat.

  From across the Alameda, the horn of the viceroy's soldados blew.

  "Run!" Mateo shouted.

  I ran behind him into a residential area. When there were no sounds of pursuit, we walked in the direction of the don's house.

  Mateo was angrier than I had ever
seen him and I kept silent, shamed at my failure. He had warned me not to play the fop and wear a fancy sword, but I had done so and would now be bleeding to death on the Alameda if it were not for his quick blade.

  When we were near the don's house and his face was no longer the color of the Smoking Mountain when it spit out fire. I mumbled my amends.

  "You warned me about the basket guard. I was too concerned with playing the dandy than being the swordsman that you taught me to be."

  "Tried to teach you," he corrected. "I told you that as a swordsman, you are a dead man. I am not angry about your foolish attempt at swordplay. I am enraged about the position you put the don in."

  "The don? I was defending his honor!"

  "You were defending his honor? You? A half-blood who is just a few steps from the sewers? You defend the honor of a Spanish gentleman?"

  "They didn't know I'm a mestizo. They think I'm Spanish."

  He grabbed me by the throat. "I don't give a damn if you are the Marqués de la Valle himself. The code of hombria demands that a man fight his own battle for a woman." He shoved me away.

  "I don't understand what I did wrong."

  "You put the don in danger."

  I was still in a fog. "How did I affect the don by defending his honor?"

  "By putting his honor at issue, you foul and disgusting lépero. The don is not a fool—he knows his wife is spreading her legs for Alva, and other men before him. They have no marriage; he stays away from the city to keep from being disgraced."

  "Why doesn't he do something about it?"

  "What is he to do? Ramon de Alva is a master swordsman. He was weaned with a dagger in his teeth. The don is a man of letters; his weapon is the quill. If he confronts Alva, he is a dead man. And it is not just Alva. If it were not the majordomo, it would be a dozen other men. Or some fool who smirks and calls him a converso as if it were a form of leprosy.

  "The don is an honorable man. He is a brave man. But he is intelligent, and he chooses his fights because he is not a fool. When you attack a man in his name, you create not just a blood feud but bring the intrigue between Isabella and Alva into the open, forcing the don to take action."

  To say I was shocked and devastated by my stupidity would not describe my agony.

  Mateo sighed. "It is not as bad as I have portrayed. You did not say why you attacked the man, and you are new and unknown in the city. I recognized one of his friends as the brother of a lady I have become acquainted with. Tomorrow I will tell her that you attacked the man because you thought he was the culprit who was singing love songs to your betrothed. Without identifying you, I will pass the message that you were mistaken and regret the incident. That will not keep you from getting killed if the man I wounded finds you, but it will protect the don."

  We reached the house and paused in the coolness of the courtyard, while Mateo lit one of those tobacco leaves that the indios rolled into a turd.

  "More was in your face when you looked at Alva than his affaire d'amour with Isabella. I saw hate, the kind one gives to a man who has violated his mother."

  I flinched at the reference to mothers. "I knew about the intrigue between Isabella and Alva," I told him in a low tone after making sure no servants were in the area. When I described the romping in the courtyard at the Velez hacienda, Mateo muttered a curse that if it came true, Isabella would burn eternally in the fires of hell.

  "Then that is it? The affair with Isabella?"

  "Yes."

  "You are a lying dog of a lépero. Tell me the truth before I cut off your testicules and feed them to the fish in the fountain."

  Defeated, I sat down on the edge of the fountain and told Mateo the whole story—almost. I left out Maria and the whorehouse. It had been bottled up in me for so long, it came out in a gush of words and hand wringing—the strange vendetta of the old woman in black, being told my father was a gachupin, the questioning by Ramon de Alva, the murder of Fray Antonio, the search for me.

  After I was finished, Mateo called for a servant and instructed him to bring us wine. Then he lit another foul-smelling tobacco leaf.

  "Let us assume for a moment that your fray was correct, that your father was a gachupin." He shrugged. "There are thousands of half-blood bastards in New Spain, mestizos, mulattos, even ones with chino blood from women brought on the Manila galley. A bastard of even pure blood cannot inherit from his father unless he is recognized and made an heir. If that were the case, you would not have been raised by a defrocked priest in the gutters of Veracruz."

  "I have had these same thoughts. I have no rights under the law and am hardly considered human. The reason why Alva wants to kill me remains as big a mystery to me as why someone would want to breathe in foul smoke from a plant leaf."

  "The tobacco comforts me when there is no woman around to caress me." He stood up and stretched and yawned. "Tomorrow you must go back out onto the streets and become a lépero again. And I must buy a pulqueria."

  Mateo was usually so full of advice—often bad—that his failure to offer a solution to the matter of Ramon de Alva left me... empty.

  "What do you think, Mateo? Why would Alva kill the fray and want to kill me?"

  "I don't know, Bastardo, but we shall find out."

  "How?"

  He stared at me as if I had asked him the color of his sister's petticoats.

  "Why, we will ask him!"

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  The next morning I was happy to be out of my Spanish clothes and into the rags of a lépero. From an indio currando I procured a pinch of the powder that the Healer had used to inflate my nose. I had stopped bathing after the don gave me the assignment, and even stopped washing my hands. Still, I would have had to roll in a pigsty for a week to have gotten back the true feel of the gutter.

  I was anxious to test my old begging skills and was quickly disappointed as one person after another walked by me without dropping a single coin into my dirty palm. Contorting my limbs was out of the question. Not only might I be recognized, but lack of practice had stiffened my joints.

  Weeping, wailing, pleading, whining—nothing brought a coin to me. Mexico was a city like Veracruz, but it was twenty times bigger and I assumed that gave me twenty times the opportunity to swindle. I soon learned that it merely increased the number of times I would be quirted or kicked.

  Perhaps it is me, I thought. Being a lépero was like being a gentleman—it was not just the clothes one wore, not even just the way one walked or talked, but the way one thought. I no longer thought like a lépero and it showed to those I approached.

  Giving it another try, I spotted a fine corner for begging at an inn near the marketplace. Inns catered to visitors, and visitors were more likely to open their purses. I was turned down immediately by a fat merchant—and then spotted an angry bull of a lépero ready to slit my belly for invading his territory.

  I hurried away, deciding to take Don Julio's advice. I would wander among the people on the streets, especially the africanos and mulattos, keeping my ears and eyes open.

  Veracruz had as many africanos and mulattos on the street as indios and español combined. Ciudad Mexico did not have that high a percentage of blacks, but their presence was significant. Black-skinned household servants were considered more prestigious than brown-skinned ones, and those with white skin were extremely rare. No lady of quality could call herself such unless she had at least one personal maid of African heritage.

  And the Spanish bureaucracy, which categorized everyone according to blood and place of birth, created three different classes of africano. Bozales were blacks born in Africa; ladines were "acculturated" blacks who had lived in other Spanish domains, such as the Caribbean islands, before coming to New Spain; negros criollos were born in New Spain.

  Even the Church had forsaken the poor africano. Unlike the feverish effort to save the soul of the indio, little effort was made to instruct the africano in Christianity. Africanos and mulattos were barred from the priesthood.

&
nbsp; Fray Antonio believed that africanos were deliberately not taught Christ's message that all of us were equal in God's eyes.

  Even more than the indio, the africanos thus continued their own, often strange, religious practices, some of which they had learned on the Dark Continent and others that they had acquired here—witchcraft, worship of strange objects, deviltry. They followed their own set of healers, sorcerers and pagan rites not dissimilar to those of the indio.

  I encountered an africano woman selling love potions from where she sat on a blanket next to a building wall. She stirred the potion with the forefinger of a hanged man... shades of Snake Flower! I hurried along, determined not to donate a piece of my virile organ to her pot.

  It is said that the Bozales, born in Africa and brought here aboard Portuguese slave ships, are much more submissive than either the ladines brought from the Caribbean or the criollos born here. Friendless, homeless, without family, pursued and captured like animals by slave hunters, starved and brutalized in the holes of slave ships, and then beaten into submission by vicious slave masters in the New World, africanos had been dehumanized into a work animal.

  No large groups of africanos assembled on the streets, and I had to move among the smaller groups of two or three. The viceroy had forbidden africanos from assembling on the street or in private in groups of more than three. The penalty for a first offense was two hundred lashes while the slave's left hand was nailed to the whipping post. For a second offense, castration.

  Even at a slave's funeral, no more than four male slaves and four female were allowed to come together to mourn the dead.

  Almost all of the servants I observed were negros criollo. Not one had the fire expected from a slave fresh off a ship and still not broken to the yoke of slavery. What I heard was everything from amused contempt for their white masters to smothering hatred.

  Don Julio had arranged for me to work a day in an obrajes. A small factory, usually no larger than a hacienda stable, the obrajes produced inexpensive products—cheap, coarse wool clothing and the like, goods that were not barred by finer imports from Spain.